Turning back the clock: Inn hosts 1800's summer camp

Wednesday

Aug 14, 2013 at 6:15 PM

By Derrick Ekek@the-leader.com

A group of local children is getting to experience what it was like to grow up in the 1800s at a summer camp this week at Corning's Benjamin Patterson Inn Museum.According to program coordinator Janet Lyons, the 15 campers dress in period costume each day and take part in a variety of activities typical of the 19th century.They spent Tuesday in an 1864 log cabin home on the museum's grounds, doing chores such as cooking applesauce, dipping candles over an open fire, watering horses and doing laundry in a wash basin.On Wednesday, they were in the museum's Browntown Schoolhouse, a one-room schoolhouse. They got reading, writing and arithmetic lessons on slate boards, wrote with quill pens, played a pump organ and made homemade ice cream for a snack.Today, they'll be in the Patterson Inn, and are planning to do open-hearth cooking and other activities.Other highlights this week included a visit from Civil War re-enactors Ray "Bud" Wilson and Larry Lattin, and learning traditional songs and dances. The three-day camp will be capped off by a cookie and lemonade social this evening.

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